Health summit exposes irreconcilable differences

Well, it comes to no surprise that a bipartisan agreement wasn't reached at the Health reform summit on Thursday. It seems the largest factor of the disagreement is, what else, money. The people of USA Today believe that affordable health care for everyone, no matter what income level, is the way to go. I can certainly agree with their logic, but, as they said, the bill is complex and controversial. In my opinion, not very many good things come without controversy, so I see this as a necessary step towards the potential passage of this bill. The only problem is the potential disagreement among the democratic party itself, which, just might hinder things a bit. Many Republicans who once supported with the insurance requirement now say that it is an "Unconstitutional intrusion on Americans' personal freedom."

The arguments of those at USA Today are valid, but you still can't ignore the aspect of funding. Also, how do they plan to enforce the mandate, assuming it passes. There are still some questions that need answering before there can be any more progress on what the people of USA today call, "The linchpin toward providing universal coverage and ending the most noxious insurance company practices."

Will this be a new trend among politicians?

Representative Patrick Kennedy, the Rhode Island Democrat announced that he won't be running for re-election following his eighth congressional term. He released a video on Thursday in which he stated, "Having spent two decades in politics, my life is taking a new direction, and I will not be a candidate for re-election this year," as also stated in this CNN article Now, I can somewhat understand after twenty years of politics that you would want to move on, but is this going to happen with all of our reasonably seasoned politicians? I don't know about you, but I think that in order to have a steady, stable, government, we need experienced people. I may be overreacting. In fact, I hope I'm overreacting. I just don't want to see our politicians, after five to ten years say, "I've gotten bored with politics, I'm going to move on and become an astronaut!"